The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

The lama says he still doesn't understand why people are not kinder to each other.”

On the other hand, if time and satisfaction are precious, truly priceless, you will find that the cost of business failure, so long as it does not put in peril the well-being of you or your family, pales in comparison with the personal risks of not trying to live the life you want today.

Riding the highs and lows long enough, never being able to see beyond the next peak or the next valley, makes one realize there is only one element in life under our control—our own excellence.

Ted Williams once said baseball was the only human endeavor at which one could fail 70 percent of the time and still be a success. To baseball I would add the venture capital business, in which only two or three in ten of all funded business ideas eventually hit big, the Intern

The Valley recognizes that failure is an unavoidable part of the search for success.

startup. If you turn a visionary startup into an operating company too early, you throw out its birthright. I

WORKING WITH Steve Perlman at WebTV taught me how critical it is in an early-stage startup to strike the right balance between leadership and management.

liked being the leader better than being the guy who made the trains run on time. I found that the art wasn't in getting the numbers to foot, or figuring out a clever way to move something down the assembly line. It was in getting somebody else to do that and to do it better than I could ever do; in encouraging people to exceed their own expectations; in inspiring people to be great; and in getting them to do it all together, in harmony. That was the high art.

The chance to work on a big idea is a powerful reason for people to be passionate and committed. The big idea is the glue that connects with their passion and binds them to the mission of an organization. For people to be great, to accomplish the impossible, they need inspiration more than financial incentive.

The distinction between drive and passion is crucial.